Featured Product …

DuraStone HPF
A New Category of Flooring

Is it ceramic? Stone? Marble? Cork? No, it’s DuraStone HPF! Congoleum® brings flooring to the next level with the introduction of DuraStone HPF (High Performance Flooring).

Its unique construction creates a flooring product that is incredibly durable and easy to maintain, virtually stain-proof, and is the sensible alternative to natural products such as ceramic. Utilizing cutting-edge technology, Congoleum® has created a 16″ x 16″ designer tile that captures the texture and natural beauty of nature’s own creations.

DuraStone HPF is a brand new category of floor covering. Each tile is manufactured with a hefty .160″ extra-thick overall construction. As its name suggests, DuraStone HPF exhibits incredible strength and durability as well as the warmth and beauty of natural materials. DuraStone HPF also features:

Revolutionary patented Nano-composite technology

• Durable limestone composite base
• Lifelong limited warranty against fade, stain and wear out
• Extremely durable and easy to clean surface
• Upscale 16″ x 16″ tile size
• Can be used in light commercial setting

DuraStone HPF is available in 11 different patterns including the recently released “American Slate” and “Travertine Granite” series. Contact PAL for samples and brochures or visit the Congoleum® website for a complete listing of their products.

 

Happy New Year $$$

At the end of every year, we gather all the sales people together and ask each of them what the coming year will bring to PAL. There are the optimists with their rose-colored glasses saying, “Sales will be up 20% from last year.” Then there are the post-sillers that waffle, “All my customers say they’re going to be busy but they also say it might be slow.” The pessimists among us sit in their chairs whispering statements of doom and gloom – “Tourism is still struggling and you know what that does to the rest of the economy.”

This year we had our spreadsheets out along with the last 45,000 years of sales reports. We had questionnaires and projections scattered all over the place. Finally the magic sales growth number that was going to guide Pacific American Lumber in 2003 was produced. Everyone sighed with relief knowing that PAL would be in business for another year.

As always the case, I walked away from this meeting with an uneasy feeling. What had we missed? Then it came to me at the 2003 BIA Home Builders Show that we had it all wrong. If we wanted to project what our business was going to be like for the year, we simply needed to listen to what the visitors in our booth were saying.

As I stood in our booth, I watched as hundreds and hundreds of qualified buyers walked around asking sophisticated questions and inquiring on pricing and availability. There was an excitement and interest unlike anything I had seen in a long time. These people weren’t window-shopping. They were ready to buy! When it was all said and done, I realized 2003 was going to be a great year!

Which led me to think that the next year-end sales meeting should be scheduled post-BIA Home Builders Show 2004. So much for spreadsheets and sales analysis reports.

Aloha,

Chris Nied

 

PAL’s Newest Arrival

Okay, we are not in elementary school anymore but you have to understand that every morning when she walks into the office, you wonder if you should be leaving an apple on her desk. You see, she has that “Favorite Teacher” thing about her as she enters the room with a bubbly, “Good Morning Everyone,” followed by an, “Aloha Ka Kou.” You immediately feel like you’re about to get a lesson on multiplication tables.

She is Barbara Haliniak. Barbara started working at PAL in November 2002 and comes with an extensive history in the floor covering industry – including a combined 30 years with Homeowners Design Center and World Carpet. Barbara’s expertise will be a great addition to our inside sales team. And that expertise extends past the building industry. She is known within the company as our link to the hot info coming out of the UH Athletic program!

We look forward to a long relationship with Barbara”Scoops” Haliniak and hope you will all welcome her to the company as well.

“Barbara’s expertise will be a great addition to our inside sales team. And that expertise extends past the building industry.”

 

Cutting Edge Products

Featuring Witex Loc-Tec Comfort

The Surfaces Expo is being held this quarter in Las Vegas, Nevada. It has been the premier floor covering convention for many years and is the one event that manufactures set their sights on for new product introductions. Nine years ago a handful of companies used the Surfaces Expo to introduce a new line of floor covering they labeled “Laminate Flooring”. We were so impressed with the Witex USA products that PAL developed a distribution agreement with them.

In the past five years, the industry has exploded and there are literally dozens of laminate floor manufactures vying for a share of the market.